Retro gaming

[Zork Nemesis]

I'm talking real retro games, games before the turn of the millenium. Those video games that every now and then, you dust off your old consoles or boot your emulator just to play again. I'm a little curious right now as to what other people still play and if you've been watching me on Steam i've been booting my emulators often. What I've been playing recently:

Battletoads (NES), yes, Battletoads. Inspired by the 4-player race (look it up yourself, I won't post it due to its copious amounts of well-deserved f-bombs), I've been playing and replaying that game often. I still haven't beaten it, but I'm proud of the fact that I got from the start to Clinger Winger (stage 11) in less than 100 deaths (infinite lives are active; the game is near impossible to beat without cheating) without save states, and I beat Rat Race (stage 10) with only 5 deaths prior to the boss. Clinger Winger has got me stuck though, that stage is really damn hard, it makes Super C look like a joke sometimes.

Tetris Attack (and it's variants, Panel de Pon and Pokemon Puzzle League), the best damn puzzle game ever. I've got my SNES emulator save stated up so that I can face Bowser/Cordellia on Very Hard any time I want, and to this day they still put up a hell of a fight. I will admit that a Logitech controller is much harder to play TA with than a SNES controller, but I can live with it. Call me out on this one if you want, but I feel Cordellia is much harder than Bowser in Very Hard. Cordellia doesn't prioritize in chains, and therefore doesn't leave herself without options for clearing garbage. On top of that, since she hardly chains higher than 5, you're left with fewer options for garbage chains (as opposed to Bowser where counter-attacking his garbage blocks with a x10 chain is common practice). Statisitcally speaking, Bowser usually goes down in less than 2 minutes for me, while Cordellia will often slug out a grueling 4 minute duel, with my longest vs match ever again her lasting for 6:35 (in which I lost).

Lemmings (Genesis), if you haven't played this game, I suggest you do so. Classic puzzle action, and it's available on almost every platform with numerous different clones to be found on the internet. It's just so addicting and the Genesis version has the best music.

So, what old games have you been playing recently?

[Peahats]

Well, it's not exactly retro, but I've been emulating The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003). Still, that's 9 years ago so I guess I can call it an older game.

[Will T.]

I don't play many old games lately because of school (going to DigiPen to learn how to make games doesn't leave a lot of time for actually playing games...), but I recently had a lot of my old games fixed up. Got new cartridge contacts in my NES and had all the carts cleaned, and got some of my N64 carts' screws tightened and contacts cleaned. In terms of actual playing, I played Banjo-Kazooie at the DP LAN party a couple weeks ago and got a little over 50% through in just under 2 hours. I want to try to speed-run that entire game someday...
(Note that 50% in under 2 hours was not done in one session, nor was it what I consider a good "speedy" time. )

I've been meaning to start a new file on Banjo-Tooie, but again, not a lot of time right now for playing games. Plus I'm still afraid of Canary Mary.

There's a retro-games store near my house where I've been eyeing a few old consoles lately, especially a Sega Genesis for ~$20. I've been playing the Sonic Genesis titles on Steam (still awful at them though ), and I've been thinking I might like to have the original cartridge versions. If I had more time to play (and some actual income rather than a fixed quantity of cash...), I might go in there and go nuts.

I used to have a bunch of emulators, but that was ages ago ... I got rid of 'em because the ROMs took up way too much hard drive space on an old comp that had barely any space to begin with.

[Supreveio]

I haven't touched any of my consoles in quite a while, but some of my favorite retro games are such:

SNES:
EarthBound
Chrono Trigger
Super Mario World

Genesis:
Sonic the Hedgehog (1-3&K)

N64:
Snowboard Kids (1 & 2)
Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie

PC:
Doom (1 & 2)
Quake (just the first one, plus Team Fortress)
Duke Nukem 3D

And then there's Pokemon, but Red/Blue/Green/Yellow and Gold/Silver/Crystal have not aged well.

[Parade Kid]

SNES:
Inindo

NES:
Dragon Warrior 4

[Roirdan]

I've had a hankering recently to bust out the SNES (or, more likely, my DS) and play some Final Fantasy 4 and 6.

[belak]

I know these don't really count, since I've only played the re-released versions in Final Fantasy Origins, but old FF games are amazing...

Also, Earthworm Jim is amazing. One of the few games I actually got to play on the SNES... I miss that game.

[Zork Nemesis]

Origins counts, a lot of rereleases count for that matter. For example, I own FF6 on at least four platforms (SNES, Wii Virtual Console, GBA, and PS1 come to mine). Same with Chrono Trigger (SNES, DS, PS1) and the Sonic Titles (Genesis, Wii Virtual Console, Steam, PC CD-Rom, Gamecube, this one goes on). You know a game is good if it's worth buying again 10+ years later on multiple platforms.

On a side note, I just beat Battletoads for the first time. I cheated, yes, had infinite lives active, but no save states. It took me 146 deaths to reach the ending. Highlights of said adventure include hitting 3 of the warps (1, 4, and 6), No deaths in stages 1, 6, and 10, and a successful Rat Race glitch hit on the first try (if you can manage to kill the rat after you kick the bomb, the stage will clear for some reason). Oh, and then there was that completly bull shark moment I posted in the shoutbox. At the end of stage 9, you jump out of shark-infested water and have to parachute through a bunch of spikes. I moved over to the right side of this chute and the shark managed to hit me through a wall despite the fact that I was not in the water. That caused me to lose the parachute and fall onto spikes. Man I think that enraged me more than Clinger Winger did.

And the ending sucked.

[belak]

I will say as well, that if you're using an emulator, I've had a lot of luck with my $5 PS2 controller adapter... it's close enough to just about all the old controllers that you can usually find some configuration you like, though that may just be because I grew up with the PS1 and PS2... I've used it with PS1 games, a GBA emulator, and (I think) the SNES emulator I had... though I'm not 100% sure on that one

[trilobite]

Oh, this post is irresistible.

I'm not a console guy -- strictly PC.
I set up one of my old computers with Windows ME so I could play some of the old classics.

These are some of my favorite oldies:

Grim Fandango - Manny Calavera and Glotis on a deadly adventure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_fandango

The Curse of Monkey Island - Guybrush vs. the evil Le Chuck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_monkey_island

MDK and MDK2 - Kurt Hectic is one of my fav game heroes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDK_%28video_game%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDK2

Descent 3 - The Pyro GL is a great ship. Play as the betrayed material defender.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_3

Forsaken - great hover bike action
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsaken_%28video_game%29

Wing Commander: Prophecy - The whole Wing Commander series was super
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Prophecy

Moto Racer and Moto Racer 2 - great arcade bike racing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moto_Racer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moto_racer_2

Star Wars Rogue Squadron - Fly missions with Wedge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Rogue_Squadron

Star Wars Episode 1 Racer - Pod racing against Teemto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_I:_Racer